A mobile area network or MANET can be a mobile “ad hoc” or mobile mesh network. The MANET can be formed by a self-configuring network of communication devices or mobile devices. Such devices can be connected to one another by wireless links. Devices that are connected to one another the MANET are considered neighbor devices. Each device can be free to move independently, and change neighbors, as the device moves through the MANET. The devices at times may forward traffic unrelated to their own use (i.e., passes information on the behalf of other devices, and acting as a router to other devices. In general, the devices can be referred to as “nodes” in the network (MANET).
MANETs can be implemented for different uses and environments. Examples of such implementations include classroom environments (i.e., educational institutions); conference halls; military deployments; hospitals and clinics (e.g., patient vital sign monitoring; sensor networks deployed to monitor environment; smart grid; oil pipelines; train tracks, and other infrastructures. Other implementations of MANETs include client cloud computing environments where client machines (i.e., nodes) network (i.e., connect) together to meet user computing needs and enable collaboration. In addition, “smart” homes with home devices and/or appliances that are networked together for entertainment, home computing, and energy saving purposes can make use of MANETs.
Issues and problems can occur in MANETs, including quality of service or QoS. QoS involves assuring that transmissions are effectively sent from source nodes to destination nodes. A dynamic mesh network, such as a MANET involves addressing throughput and link (e.g., node to node) outages. Ideally, the MANET should provide a cooperative distributed process between the nodes with low overhead costs. In typical MANETs, cooperating nodes may be determined without providing any algorithms on how those cooperating nodes are chosen.
Certain high performance mesh networks may be populated a number of user nodes that establish full connectivity can be defined by a multi-hop routing plan. When hops within the mesh (e.g., MANET) are perturbed by a dynamic environment the routing plan can require repair that can significantly increase the network signaling overhead.